Mathematics Graduate Students Organization

Seminar:

Date: October 29

This will be an introductory talk on Special Theory of Relativity. The lecture is motivated by Prof. Christopher Pope's recent course on Electromagnetic Theory in the Physics department. Predictions of Newtonian mechanics and the Galilean transformation are falsied by the experimental result that the speed of light is the same for all inertial observers. Einstein proposed two postulates to circumvent this problem. Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on a new transformation technique which is known as the Lorentz transformation. In our lecture we will discuss Lorentz transformation in details which will be followed up with Lorentz tensors, Minkowski metric and the concepts of proper time. We will also discuss the concepts of Gauge potentials and gauge invariance. If time permits we will discuss the action principle for charged particles and Gauge invariance of the action.